印象派绘画之所以成了现代艺术的开端，是因为这派画家把握住了现代生活的特质——变易性。对变易性的追求导致了印象派画家时间意识的觉醒，使他们把刻画事物的瞬间影像作为绘画的主题，从而把时间维度引入了绘画之中。为了捕捉事物的瞬间影像，印象派画家重视感知而排斥回忆和想象，因为在完整的时间意识中，感知能够获得当下的原初印象，回忆和想象则只能把握过去和未来。印象派绘画过分专注于事物的变易之美而忽视了其永恒之美，这导致其在开启现代绘画的同时，也迅速被后继的现代画派所取代。

The impressionist painting became the outset of modern art because impressionist painters had grasped the characteristics of modern life: variability. Their pursuit of variability awakened their time consciousness which was later introduced into their paintings by portraying the transient moments of objects as the theme. In order to capture that moment, impressionist painters valued perception but denied memories and imagination for perception could grasp the original impression of the certain instant while memories and imagination could only catch the past and the future in the complete time consciousness. Impressionist painters were preoccupied with the beauty of transience but ignored that of eternity. Therefore, they were replaced by the subsequent modernist painters shortly after they unveiled the history of modern painting.